William Hill CEO Starts a Foundation and Donates His Salary for the Sake of Furloughed Employees

Joe Asher, CEO of William Hill, is using his salary to create a foundation that will contribute to the welfare of furloughed employees. This is a much-welcomed philanthropic effort towards the company employees who are now out of work due to COVID-19 related closures.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus, governments decreed mandatory shutdowns of casinos and other non-essential businesses to try and control the spread of the highly infectious disease. William Hill, one of the most affected casino brands, has therefore been forced to put almost two-thirds of its employees on furlough in the wake of COVID-19. Hundreds of workers on the grounds of about 114 casinos in Las Vegas and other locations have been affected.

Joe Asher created the William Hill Foundation after he felt how unfair it was for him to continue receiving a salary while hundreds of out-of-work employees faced challenges under the current grim conditions. Accordingly, instructions on how to apply for assistance from the foundation for the affected staff will be communicated to the workers within the week.

Moreover, Joe Asher appealed to about 255 members of the staff still under employment by the company to donate any amount they can to offer a helping hand to the furloughed workers. Other than the foundation, William Hill will also continue paying for their health care during the global crisis.

More Casino Executives Stepping Up to Keep Junior Employees Afloat

In the same way, the gaming industry has seen several other chief executives forego their salaries so that they can chip in to a much bigger cause. Executives like Matt Maddox, who is the CEO of Wynn Resorts, donated his entire salary to help unemployed workers in exchange for company stock. As a result, his $1.9 million will go towards paying out-of-work employees.

Wynn Resorts, on the other hand, will continue to pay its workers, all 13,000 of them, for 30 days. The CEO also expressed that it would be easier to maintain the already trained staff compared to onboarding a whole new team after this ordeal.

Likewise, Mike Rumbolz, CEO of Everi Holdings Inc, a casino technology and loyalty solutions supplier forfeited his salary so that it would instead be used to increase the company’s liquidity during these trying times, by reducing its expenses. The CEO went further by cutting all executive salaries by 70% to allow the company to pay its employees.

Aside from gaming companies’ executives trying to work around the challenges of the current global crisis, the companies are going harder than ever before on online gaming services. Most gaming companies are working on expanding their online casino and sports game portfolios as more countries continue to go on lockdown. Right now, online gaming is among their best bets to help them stand the test of the pandemic.